This time, Nitza had been fully asleep under the sea. Even if she had somehow failed to properly breath, Carl would have taken care of her.
“I think I get it now.” Sometimes, you just needed to take a break. Optimally after fighting powerful cultivators and pushing yourself to your limits. Nitza hadn’t burned most of her spiritual energy against the Sovereign Primacy, but it wasn’t about that. Her attention had been maximized to deal with two of them and an entire shipful of other cultivators. Controlling Carl’s energy wasn’t as easy as she made it look, either. They were highly compatible, but it was still strenuous.
Her path through the Consolidated Soul Phase had taken long enough that Nitza had picked her next totem out years ago. She had debated with many different people about the subtleties of different water totems, what she wanted and what she needed. She’d spent much time diving into the sea of spiritual totems, enduring the pressure. Due to the guidance of her grandfather and her parents and everyone she trusted about cultivation, she had made sure that her earlier totems had grown properly.
Nitza knew she was having a moment of enlightenment, but she retained sufficient caution to assess her entire wellbeing once more. Was the totem she chose just right? Spiritual energy level topped off? Was this a sufficient enlightenment to advance?
She couldn’t find any flaws by the time she finished. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, of course, but she was at least certain there wasn’t anything massive she had missed.
“I need to go to the surface, Carl. Don’t let anyone disturb me.”
The leviathan was quite helpful as he did so, bringing her above the waves as he bobbed up and down. They had ended up close to an island, at least as close as Carl could get these days. He wasn’t particularly fond of the shallows. Yonit and the rest of the fleet would be taking a well deserved rest, binding their wounds… and sending off their dead. Flawless victories against the Sovereign Primacy were unreasonable, but they had come out ahead by a large margin. Though it could have easily swung the other way if Carl hadn’t protected Nitza from her own weakness.
Up and down she bobbed with the waves. The welcome splashes and cries of sea birds faded from her ears as she focused herself inward. She wasn’t quite sure how long she was drifting off, but it was long enough for her clothes to dry in the sun. She brushed the salt out of her clothing.
Nitza couldn’t say it was easy. She’d been working at advancing to the Ascending Soul Phase for what felt like forever. She would have already pushed herself to reach it if not for repeated cautions. Perhaps she could have advanced sooner, but this was the right time. Most of the work had already been done… and the last step had felt natural.
“It’s too bad that there are still Exalted Soul Phase cultivators sailing around being a menace, huh?”
Carl didn’t say anything. Obviously.
Nitza sighed in relief. “I finally made it. The Ascending Soul Phase. Maybe I’m finally a little bit strong.”
“Great job. Nitza.”
She replied automatically. “Thanks.” Then she looked around. There… wasn’t anyone around. And she didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded like crashing waves. Had she made it up? “... Carl? Can you talk?”
Carl did not reply.
“You have to tell me if you can talk! Have you been able to speak this whole time? When did you learn?”
The leviathan refused to admit he could speak, if it really was the case. Nitza almost thought she had made it up… but her memory wasn’t that faulty.
“It had to have been you,” she said. “Do you not like talking? Is it difficult? The only other spirit beasts I know are like centuries old, so maybe it takes a long time to learn.”
The leviathan was silent, except for the splashing of the waves over his body.
“If you ever want to practice speaking, I’ll help you out okay?”
Nitza felt a general sense of contentment from Carl… which didn’t really mean much. Carl was always content. Just slightly more or less so depending on the last time he’d had a snack or a nap.
Nitza sighed. Nobody would even believe her. None of the other leviathans had ever said anything. Sure, Carl was the best of them… but some creatures simply didn’t speak.
-----
The report that the Sovereign Primacy had made it all the way to an interior section of the Shimmering Islands concerned John. Their outer patrols simply couldn’t cover everything.
It could have been a disaster. Instead, it turned into something wonderful.
Ereli was going to be so mad that Nitza beat her to the Ascending Soul Phase. In John’s mind, it was an inevitability for both of them. That might not actually be true, though. His close companions had been quite lucky even if they had great talent. The fact that there hadn’t been any massive cultivation disasters was an anomaly.
Well, except for John himself. Maybe he balanced out the statistics by having his cultivation nearly annihilated… possibly twice. He didn’t quite count Fortkran though. For one thing, he hadn’t kept the first totem. Yet when John had nearly killed himself to reach the Ascending Soul Phase, his totems had been one part that remained. Maybe because they were strong enough.
It wasn’t something anyone could experiment with. John certainly wasn’t willing to try. Not on himself, nor on others. Few enough people survived such disasters that interviewing them wasn’t frequently possible.
The three Ascending Soul Phase cultivators… what worried John wasn’t them, specifically. It simply could have been three others. The Triptych. Nitza and Yonit wouldn’t have survived. Surely a few islands would have fallen before anyone could mobilize a proper defense.
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He clenched his fist. This was what they wanted, this tension and fear. He couldn’t stand it.
But… he had an opportunity to go on the offensive. A long campaign was a fool’s errand, as the Triptych would be able to wreak havoc wherever they pleased if John and Aldara were in a predictable location for extended periods… but they could make similar strikes. The only question was how many others they were bringing to support them and to engage in clean up operations.
They needed a win against the Sovereign Primacy in their territory, but annihilating whole islands in response might not be correct. Even if they set aside the potential innocents- non-cultivators if nobody else- they didn’t want to provoke the Sovereign Primacy too much. They wanted to force the leaders to come for them, not enrage them to the point they rampaged endlessly through the lands of either leader.
John didn’t know if he could feel excited to meet Aldara again, but he was certainly positively anticipating some sort of vengeance. It was impossible for him to say if it was too much anticipation or not.
-----
The two met on the northern end of the Molten Sea. That was the direction the original core of the Sovereign Primacy came from, their core sects and heartlands. Possibly better defended, of course, but that might be for the best. The more resistance they ran into, the more they could crush it. John didn’t want to flatten people that couldn’t fight back… though he’d gotten a bit too strong for that.
It wasn’t arrogance, he was just positive he could defeat anyone beneath the Exalted Soul Phase. That was alone, and with Aldara around… they hadn’t actually fought together, but he was certain they would do well.
Their strategy wasn’t quite the same as the Sovereign Primacy. Specifically, the Triptych went in and out with just the three of them. That allowed them to move with remarkable speed… but it probably fatigued them. John and Aldara couldn’t come to a conclusion of exactly how much, but they were quite happy to let some slightly-weaker cultivators provide most of their mobility on the ship. Meanwhile, they planned their attacks.
The two of them were looking at a map of a small archipelago. They were the first targets, but the exact strategy was flexible.
“I think…” Aldara pointed to one of them. “We should sink this island.”
“... Why?” John asked.
She looked up at him. Nothing about her physically looked like Matayal. Her eyes and skin weren’t the same color. And yet… he could see it. “To make a point. We have power too.”
John shook his head. “Nah. There’s no point. They could do that.” He did tap the map nearby, though. “This one is a little bit smaller. I bet we could steal it.”
“...” Aldara’s silence was deafening.
“I’m serious. It’s not much bigger than the First Peak. Granted, we don't have the materials ready… but I know how to replicate those crystals.” John pulled out a small chunk he kept in his pocket. “It’s probably not as good, but we only need it to float just above the water. Then we push it around with some wind… maybe increase its buoyancy with some heat.”
“... but why?” Aldara asked.
“Because they can’t do it. They’re short on air and fire. Light and darkness too, technically. We might be able to create some sort of repulsive force…”
“Light and darkness are attracted to each other.”
“We’ll just have to reverse the polarity.” That… wasn’t something that light and darkness did. But it sounded cool.
John held out his hands parallel to each other. Could he actually do that? Was it useful? Different questions, certainly. The latter required the former to be yes to mean anything though.
“Bleh. I feel sick,” John said after just a few moments. “I don’t think I can invert the functionality of both at once.” Ereli might be able to. “Hold out your hand?” John prompted.
Aldara did so. “I assume I am light?”
“You’d think that,” John said. “Because of how we started. But if we anchor ourselves down like that we might be failures as Exalted Soul Phase cultivators. Also, if we’re making them opposite…?” John shrugged. “Maybe we should, actually. But I’d like to try light.”
She held her hand above his. Matching the quantities of spiritual energy the other used was fairly simple, as both were tempering the flow of their energy very carefully. For one thing, they didn’t want to use much. The most likely result of this current mess was an explosion.
John struggled to keep his light from pulling away from his palm. That meant he was doing it wrong, because that was the normal result. He couldn’t help but glance at Aldara. Even if he made progress, it really needed to sync with her. Well, it was just a silly experiment anyway.
Ten minutes later, John was nursing a bruise on the back of his hand. The two cultivators were looking at an arm shaped break in the floor. Aldara had been lucky as the sudden force had pushed her arm upwards into nothing. “I think we could make a cannon. But it would probably only work once.”
He was lucky he hadn’t actually broken any bones. There were hairline fractures, which were pretty troublesome for non-cultivators but actually healed quite quickly for cultivators. John was literally fusing the bones back into whole pieces at a rapid pace, no need to wait for the normal process. Bones were basically just earth. Calcium and all that. Plus some life, but some life was earth element too.
“I did come up with a better idea,” John said.
Aldara rolled her eyes. “Let’s hear it.”
“We should just actually polarize earth and water. Either electrically or magnetically. Then we can just slide the island across the water ahead of us.”
“... why are we stealing an island again?”
“Eh. Sinking one seemed rude. Though maybe we should do one of each. I think we need to pick some that people can swim away from, though. I’d rather not slaughter everyone.”
Cultivators that wanted to fight them? Absolutely. Anyone who was willing to stay out of their way? It would be better to avoid that.
“I suppose we also can’t get the resources if we annihilate an island.”
“Exactly,” John said. It was truly wasteful. Sinking one… well, it would look pretty neat. And it would be a large project for the locals to try to recover everything while likely not infuriating them in quite the same way as just melting an island would.
John thought that maybe he had too much power literally in his hands. Unfortunately, he didn’t know anyone more responsible to hand it over to even if he could… and there were threats they had to face. Maybe they should rearrange a few small islands into a written letter of challenge, to really drive home the point.
And then when they fought the Triptych, John hoped he was right that they could win two against three. Alternatively, that they managed to bring backup. But there was nothing to do except try.
